


Freshly Killed and Chilled

by Blackbird Song (Blackbird_Song)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Challenge Response, Community: zombi_fic_ation, Gen, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-05
Updated: 2012-07-05
Packaged: 2017-11-09 06:53:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/452568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blackbird_Song/pseuds/Blackbird%20Song
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock does not believe in zombies. He does, however, wonder why the brains he's been keeping in the refrigerator for his experiments keep disappearing...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freshly Killed and Chilled

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the multi-fandom [](http://zombi-fic-ation.livejournal.com/profile)[**zombi_fic_ation**](http://zombi-fic-ation.livejournal.com/) challenge for prompt 396. (See summary.)  
>  I've always been inexplicably nervous about writing zombies, so I decided to give it a go. Same goes for Sherlock, so I combined them. Many thanks to my husband for the beta.

"John, where are my brains?"

"Fridge, top shelf, metal bowl."

"No, they're not!"

"Inside your skull, then."

"That one's still embodied, and therefore no use to me. Where are the ones that used to be in the fridge?"

"Maybe the local zombie stole them."

Nothing but a thud of a drawer closing came from the kitchen.

"Too dull for you?" John smirked the smallest bit, mostly because there was yet another picture of Sherlock in the 'ear hat' in the Guardian.

"Stultifying."

"Well, that's...." John was about to say 'comforting' when he caught the headline at the bottom of the second to last page. "Wow."

"What?"

"Oh, nothing you'd be interested in."

"You really must stop paying attention to those zombie rumours," said Sherlock from about three inches away. "You know perfectly well it's all rubbish."

"Mm-hmm," said John, absently.

"Senseless, banal stories trumped up to titillate."

"Right." John read that sentence again.

"What's so interesting about zombies to anyone older than ten, maybe twelve? John, you're an ordinary man ... perhaps you could shed some light."

"Read the article, Sherlock," said John, rising and chucking the Guardian on the table. "You might find yourself interested. Might even discover why your brains keep going missing." He stalked out of the room.

"Sorry," said Sherlock, just as John let the door shut a little too hard.

*****

John awoke from his nightmare with a start. He was sweating, so he hoped he hadn't screamed.

In that same instant, there was a crash in the kitchen, followed almost immediately by a scream. Or maybe it was a wail.

"Mrs Hudson!" Sherlock's voice filled the building and probably every room within a two-house radius. The alarm in it made John forgo his dressing gown and hurtle down the stairs to the kitchen.

"Are you all right?" said both men.

"No! No, I'm not! There are brains all over the floor. Oh, Sherlock, look at them!" Mrs Hudson wailed into her hands and against Sherlock's chest.

_"Do something,"_ mouthed Sherlock over Mrs Hudson's head to John.

_"They're your brains,"_ John mouthed back, as bitingly as he could.

Sherlock set his jaw and cut his eyes pointedly to the smear of red on the floor, then back to Mrs Hudson, then over to John, with a fixed, desperate glare. "There, there, Mrs Hudson. Just let me examine the evidence, and I'll—"

Mrs Hudson balled up a fist and thumped Sherlock rather hard in the chest.

John broke out of his stupor and went to collect her. "Come along, Mrs Hudson. You don't want to be that close to Sherlock when he's investigating, do you?"

Mrs Hudson thumped John on the chest just as Sherlock was about to give him a grateful look. "You're just as bad as he is," she moaned.

John thought that was a bit unfair, but then realised that she had a point. After all, he did nothing to stop Sherlock from keeping human body parts in various places in the kitchen, and a bowl of brains would have been quite a delicacy had they been from a butcher's shop. "Yes, I know, I'm sorry," he said, patting her shoulder. "Oh, you are tense! How long has it been since you had a holiday?"

"More than a century," she sobbed.

"Oh, well then, we must remedy that, mustn't we? How about a week or two in Spain?"

"Oh, I couldn't!" She looked up at John, eyes hollow and swollen from exhaustion and tears. "Really?"

John patted her back. "Of course. And we'll pay for it. Won't we, Sherlock?"

Sherlock ignored him.

"Sorry about him," said John, guiding Mrs Hudson from the kitchen as Sherlock followed a trail of gore to the window.

"Oh, that's all right, dear, I know how he is."

Something in her tone made John notice how pale she was, and how fragile she seemed. "When was the last time you had a proper meal, Mrs Hudson?"

"Yesterday. I had fish and chips with Mrs Turner."

John looked her up and down in doctor-mode. "Have you had a check-up recently?"

"Of course I have," said Mrs Hudson, waving John off. "Look, just clean that up, will you? And tell Sherlock I want to know who broke in to my flat!"

"No need, John," came Sherlock's voice from somewhere deep inside the kitchen.

*****

John broke away from the ravening horde of thigh-eating teens only to run headlong into something the size of a gorilla trying to smother him with a burqa. He struggled and kicked and couldn't breathe. He awoke restrained by a pair of hands, one of which was clamping his mouth. Hard. He panicked for breath until the grip loosened and Sherlock whispered, "Sorry, emergency," ever so softly into his ear.

When Sherlock let go, John formed his face into 'this had better be good'.

Sherlock nodded with a regretful look that froze John's marrow.

John followed Sherlock's footsteps exactly. Even if he hadn't had his army training, he knew every floorboard, every creak, every nuance of weather that shifted sound on every stair. With the army training, he also knew how to balance so as not to fall into a next step. This is why he didn't slam into Sherlock when the man stopped dead six inches in front of him at the entrance to the kitchen.

"Will there be just one for midnight supper, or are you expecting someone?" asked Sherlock.

"Well, I suppose it's only fair I share, now that you've caught me," said Mrs Hudson. In contrast to her end-of-the-rope display two days ago, she seemed perfectly content to be consuming the bowl of brains laid out in front of her.

"None for me, thanks," said Sherlock. "John?"

"Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease."

Sherlock turned a startled, luminous smile on John. "Brilliant, John! Of course it is! The histrionics, the trembling, the difficulty walking, the disorientation, bursting into tears for no apparent reason—"

"I don't want to get Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease."

"Well, no, of course you don't." Sherlock peered at John. "You mean you don't think this is—"

"I had reason," said Mrs Hudson, dabbing a touch of blood away from the corner of her mouth with a pristine napkin. "For the tears," she added when they stared at her.

"Yes, of course," said John. "Someone broke in and made a bloody mess of...." He trailed off, knowing that didn't work, no matter how much he wanted it to. He glanced over at Sherlock.

Sherlock's mouth turned down and he signalled a negative with his eyelids.

"Your dinner got ruined—"

"Her dinner got interrupted," said Sherlock.

"By what? A burglar?"

"No, dear, by you."

John stared at Mrs Hudson. "How did I interrupt your ... meal?"

"You made a noise when you woke from your nightmare," said Sherlock.

"Yes. You always do."

"Yes," said Sherlock, looking at John before turning to Mrs Hudson, "but it's so soft that I can barely hear it when I'm wide awake and listening for everything. And I live in the same flat. How can you hear it when you don't?"

"I was in the kitchen in your flat, Sherlock."

"Yes, that night, but you said 'you always do' to John. You're not always in our flat at this time of night, or I'd know."

"I have very good hearing, dear. I'm sorry, but would you mind if I continued eating? My brains are getting warm."

"Be my guest," said Sherlock.

"Since they're his brains," added John.

"So back to the subject of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease—"

"Don't be ridiculous, Sherlock!" Mrs Hudson teased out a chunk of brain from its matrix. "So much nicer than cutting them, don't you think? Preserves more of their natural structure. Very tasty...." Her voice acquired a lustful tinge and her eyes gleamed as she sucked in the mouthful of brain. "Oh.... Oh! Thirty-five years old, give or take a month, Welsh ... male?" She teased apart the amygdala. "Oh, yes, definitely! And lots of furrows. IQ about ... a hundred and seventy-two, yes?"

"Give or take a point or two," said Sherlock.

"Now you've both got CJD," said John.

"Bollocks, John!"

John and Sherlock stared at Mrs Hudson.

"I don't have mad cow disease," she said, lovingly teasing out another morsel of genius-level brain, "I'm a zombie."

John's eyes widened. "You ... don't seem to be all that ... grey. In the skin, I mean. And you're not cold to the touch. Are you?"

"Zombies don't exist," said Sherlock.

"Of course they do, Sherlock. Right here on your own planet, too! Look at the zombie bees and ants."

"Not to mention the Zombie attacks in Bletchley," said John.

"Oh, no, dear, those aren't by our kind." Mrs Hudson sucked thoughtfully on a bit of corpus callosum.

"No, those are done by a small group of men in their late twenties, early thirties – maybe with a woman trying to fit in – trying to attract straight female 'Sean of the Dead' fans under twenty-five," said Sherlock.

"Very good, Sherlock! Only it's three men and two women."

Sherlock frowned.

Mrs Hudson sighed. "One of them is trans. I thought you were above letting that confuse you."

Sherlock's face became sharp and poisonous.

"How do you know that if you're not involved?" said John.

"We keep an eye on the trades," said Mrs Hudson.

"You mean the tabloids," said Sherlock, dully.

"Yes, it is very _Men In Black_ , but they do tell us where to look and what to avoid." Mrs Hudson sighed. "I'm quite full. I think I'll just save this for—"

"Mrs Turner," said Sherlock.

"Not exactly." Mrs Hudson wiped her mouth and started to pack up the remaining half of the brain she'd been consuming. "More for when I'm at hers later this evening. She's not one of us." She reached for the bowl and stopped. "You don't mind, do you? I mean, surely a half-eaten brain isn't any use to you..."

"Yes it is," said Sherlock.

"Well, then, just take it out of the rent," said Mrs Hudson, testily. "We can't have the likes of you sussing our DNA, can we? What would happen if one of the big biotech companies got hold of it? Nobody's brains would taste right!"

John looked from one to the other, furiously taking mental notes for his—

"And you can't blog about this one, John!"

John screamed without volition.

"Oh, I'm sorry, dear, I really am!" The yellowish-white veins began to subside and tuck themselves back into what was better described as rotting integument than skin.

"You aren't from here," said Sherlock, suddenly close to John.

"Yes I am," said Mrs Hudson, as she normalised. "Well, not London, of course, but I am a UK citizen. It's my parent who's from ... elsewhere."

"And you can't tell us where from," said John. He took comfort from Sherlock's proximity, but stood steadfastly on both his own feet.

"Well, I could, but then I'd have to eat you." Mrs Hudson gave the packet of half a brain a delicate shake.

"Ah. Well, I doubt I'd be all that tasty. Certainly not compared with Sherlock, I'd imagine." John felt his face turn sour at giving Sherlock yet another point of superiority. "But you also did say you were full."

"On the contrary! You'd be very tasty. Exquisite, in fact. Sherlock, on the other hand, is revolting!"

John wasn't sure whether to smile or run away until her last word. "I thought you liked intelligent brains." He looked immediately to his right to find a smile flick onto and away from Sherlock's face.

"Oh, I do! I relish that touch of arrogance that suffuses the frontal cortex and that delicious flexibility that makes the brains so tender. But Sherlock's brain is cooked in its own electricity. Tough as old shoe leather, most likely, and so bitter nobody of my kind would want it."

John peered at Mrs Hudson. (Far better than eyeing Sherlock's doubtless fume.) "Aren't zombies supposed to eat fresh brains? As in, er, warmish ones?"

"John, really! You eat animals that have been dead for quite a while, so why shouldn't we? Some of us even like them cooked." She shuddered. "Not my taste, though. Recently killed and chilled is my preference. So much easier to make a trip to the local abattoir than kill one's meat oneself, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes, of course," John managed.

"Abattoir," said Sherlock. "You mean mortuaries, hospitals, prisons, and so forth?"

"Let's just say I have my sources." Mrs Hudson glanced at the bowl housing two intact brains. "And might I add that you have been a very obliging tenant?"

"Until John startled you into dropping your meal and my response made it necessary for you to stage a break-in to your own property."

Mrs Hudson shifted, her fingers coming to her lips. "Yes, that was very distressing. I was so hungry!"

Sherlock appraised her for what seemed an eternity to John. "Yes. You don't eat for pleasure, but you do enjoy what you must eat for necessity. It must make life easier. When was the last time you killed for a meal?"

Mrs Hudson looked up at him, eyes pinched and wide at the same time. "Just for a meal?"

John looked from her to Sherlock, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. "'Just'?"

"Well, there was that horrible boy who came at me with a broken bottle a year ago wanting my purse. I had no choice..." She trailed off, voice trembling though not quite at the point of weeping.

"Just for a meal, Mrs Hudson," said Sherlock. "When was the last time you killed solely for food?"

"When I was eighteen," she replied, not looking up.

"Which was when?"

"Sherlock!" John looked to Mrs Hudson and back. "Never ask a woman her age," he hissed.

"That applies to human women. And it's stupid."

"Agreed, but—"

"1867."

John swallowed. "What?"

"The fifteenth of January," said Mrs Hudson, and now she was crying.

"Fifteenth of January, fifteenth of January, fifteenth – 1867. Fifteenth January, 1867!"

"What's so significant about that?" said John. "Apart from the fact that it makes Mrs Hudson ... a hundred and sixty-two years old?"

"Really, John!" Sherlock handed Mrs Hudson a tissue. "January 1867: Exceptionally cold start to the month with a widely fluctuating temperature range and a period of ten days so cold that the Regent's Park Lake became a popular spot for ice skating. On the fifteenth, the ice gave way unexpectedly and forty people fell in and died. Did you do something to weaken the ice?"

"No, of course not! But I was starving, and instead of resuscitating the victims, I ... despatched them." Mrs Hudson sobbed quietly into the tissue, which disintegrated into grey goo and dripped onto the floor.

Sherlock sighed and handed her a dishtowel, instead. "You must have had food for at least two months, but how did you keep it cold when the lake warmed up?"

Mrs Hudson sniffled and dabbed her eyes. The dishtowel seemed to be holding up, though the floorboards where the tissue had dissolved were not faring well. "I put it in a cryostasis chamber my parent had ... oh, dear. Oh, Sherlock, I'm going to have to eat you and John-n-n-nnnn."

"Is the cryostasis chamber still extant?" said Sherlock, standing rock steady behind John to prevent him from doing anything racing through his mind.

"No. It was destroyed in the Blitz."

"Well then, there's no need to eat us, especially since doing so would provide incontrovertible proof of your cannibalism to a government even less inclined than I to believe in the existence of extra-terrestrials or zombies. And besides, you don't like killing. You're just as lazy as the average Londoner who plods into the local Tesco for bacon and eggs and maybe a bit of wilting veg."

John scowled and felt it fill the room.

"So I think that we're all best served," continued Sherlock, "if you continue to be our landlady for a reasonable rent and whatever brains I can procure for you without raising suspicion or detracting from my work, in return for which you will undertake not to eat or harm John or myself, no matter how many paintball splotches end up on your walls or how much I find out about your point of origin."

"What about Mycroft?" said John between his teeth.

"Oh, no! I'm allergic to Mycroft," said Mrs Hudson, rinsing out the dishtowel under running water.

"Lestrade?"

"He'd be quite yummy...."

"Lestrade is also off limits," said Sherlock, flatly.

"I notice you haven't mentioned Donovan," said John.

Sherlock was silent.

"I'm really not interested in killing anyone, John. Sherlock's right. I am quite lazy. That's why I got out of the housekeeping business."

"We have a deal, then," said Sherlock.

"Yes, dear, I believe we do." Mrs Hudson started to raise her hand, only to withdraw it. "Only...."

"What?"

"You know that holiday in Spain you were mentioning earlier?"

"Yes," said Sherlock and John.

"Could we make it Mexico, instead? I hear that Day of the Dead is lots of fun!"

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> The Regent's Park ice skating accident referenced here is a real event. Here is a good recounting of it, from which you can draw your own conclusions about certain details of Mrs Hudson's recounting (not to mention the site-owner's ability to spell 'tragedy'): <http://www.historyhouse.co.uk/articles/ice_skating_tradegy.html>


End file.
